SUMMARY A small remnant of native forest and scrub located in the upper East Branch of the Tokomairiro River is described and assessed for ecological significance. Vegetation grades from pasture on rolling ridges through bracken, Himalayan honeysuckle, gorse and broom scrub on upper gully slopes, to a mosaic of forest types characterised by kanuka, common broadleaved species, or narrow-leaved l...

Since fallen trees are a key factor in biodiversity and biogeochemical cycling, information about their spatial distribution is of use in determining species distribution and nutrient and carbon cycling in forest ecosystems. Ground-based surveys are both time consuming and labour intensive. Remote-sensing technology can reduce these costs. Here, we used high-spatial-resolution aerial photograph...

The broadleaved evergreen forests of the East Asian warm temperate zone are characterised by their high biodiversity and endemism, and there is therefore a need to extend our understanding of its genetic diversity and phylogeographic patterns. Castanopsis (Fagaceae) is one of the dominant tree species in the broadleaved evergreen forests of Japan. In this study we investigate the genetic divers...

In forest inventories, the species information is crucial for economical, ecological and technical reasons. Species recognition is currently a bottleneck in practical remote sensing applications. Here, we examined species discrimination using tree-level LiDAR features in discrete-return data. The aim was to examine the robustness and explanatory power of the intensity and height distribution fe...

Tree mortality is a key process underlying forest dynamics and community assembly. Understanding how tree mortality is driven by simultaneous drivers is needed to evaluate potential effects of climate change on forest composition. Using repeat-measure information from c. 400,000 trees from the Spanish Forest Inventory, we quantified the relative importance of tree size, competition, climate and...

European forests host a diversity of tree species that are increasingly threatened by fungal pathogens, which may have cascading consequences for forest ecosystems and their functioning. Previous experimental studies suggest that foliar and root pathogen abundance and disease severity decrease with increasing tree species diversity, but evidences from natural forests are rare. Here, we tested w...